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Vivel Patisserie

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Featured Articles, United Arab Emirates | 0 comments

Jul 01, 11

Specialty: Biscuits.
Price: 2 AED/piece.
Address: Dubai Mall, Dubai.

Travel to the Middle East, and you might be shocked at the dryness of the sweets. Forget the moist and the buttery. Here, locals go crazy for the crumbly, gritty, and powdery, and sweetness tends to be more muted, more in line with the flavor of nuts and honey.

Nowhere is that better seen than in the Middle Eastern love affair with the biscuit. And few are better known for their biscuits than Vivel Patisserie.

Based in the United Arab Emirates, Vivel Patisserie takes biscuits to the extreme, producing dozens of varieties. Most fall on the classic side of the spectrum, using traditional Middle Eastern ingredients and pastry styles. That means a heavy representation of fruit jams (apricot, raspberry), nuts (pistachios, almonds, walnuts), and, of course, the almighty king of all sweets Emirati, the date.

That can, however, prove a double-edged sword. Vivel clearly sticks to its specialty, incorporating mostly basic ingredients—ones so common that nearly any confectionary store in the UAE should be able to handle them. Only so many times, though, can you eat a cookie with the same type of nutty crunch or viscous jam. Using a slightly different fruit or nut, while leaving the pastry completely intact, feels more like swapping color schemes than crafting a unique pastry. Vivel’s initially awe-inspiring selection of over 50 biscuits and cookies is thus quite more limited than at first apparent.

As for texture, the pastries come on the drier side, crumbling apart into a sandy powder that can become unsatisfying at times. Thankfully, Vivel typically incorporates some form of counteracting richness or creaminess into the cookie, whether it be some butteriness (unnatural for many Middle Eastern treats), jam, or thick nut paste.

More problematic is the sheer lack of flavor. How Vivel could start with such intense ingredients, like dates and raspberry jam, yet allow those ingredients to play second fiddle to the stronger, dry, neutral biscuit flavor is beyond me. The emphasis may be nuance and balance, but the actual effect is frequently blandness. For example, in the Square Dates—a pastry with cooked flour and a date filling, topped with pistachios—the dates add only a light sweetness that doesn’t even taste like dates.

When Vivel does manage to harness the true flavor of the key ingredient, though, the results can be impressive. In the Florentine—an almond biscuit with honey and fruit, all dipped in dark chocolate—the viscous honey acts as a binding agent, keeping the biscuit moist and chewy, rather than dry. That balanced, natural honey sweetness, complements the fruit nicely. Similarly, in the Brochtoc—a pastry of cooked flour and dark chocolate—the richness of the chocolate keeps the crumbliness of the pastry in check.

Moreover, while nothing I tried floored me, nothing disgusted me, either. Vivel may not produce the best biscuits, but it can at least consistently produce the same baseline quality—boring but good.

Vivel Patisserie suffers not so much from poor quality, then, as from its tendency to play it safe. Traditional and easy-to-enjoy, its biscuits fail to distinguish themselves from the endless mountains of identical Arabic sweets sprinkled throughout the country. Vivel may be a true Emirati experience, but you won’t be missing much if you pass it on your way through the UAE.

What I Tasted

Square Dates (Traditional pastry made with cooked flour and a date filling, topped with pistachios): A little gritty up top—somewhat unsatisfyingly so. The date filling is far heavier and somewhat gummy, in a good way. Unfortunately, the flavor is underwhelming. I get light fruity sweetness, which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t seem to embody dates. 2.2+/5.0
Raspberry (Crunchy hazelnut biscuit filled with raspberry Jam): Far better. Here, the biscuit contributes something: a nutty crunch, but with an oddly fruity flavor, like orange zest-infused nuts (it’s actually the raspberry). And the raspberry isn’t too thick, but rather adds some very balanced, fruity sweetness. A little more jam, and fresher jam, could have helped. 3.5/5.0
Apricot (Crunchy almond biscuit filled with apricot jam): Less interesting than the last, largely because the almond comes ground into the cookie, so that it’s somewhat powdery and bland, rather than crunchy. The apricot jam is gummier and feels even less fresh than the Raspberry biscuit, though the fruitiness is stronger. 2.7/5.0
Nocochi Brochtoc (Traditional cardamom pastry made with chickpeas, covered in crispy almond and pistachio meringue): Very interesting, with a slightly aromatic quality that I found refreshing (from the cardamom I bet). The pastry is somewhat powdery again, but it blends nicely with the crispy crust, which adds a lot of almond flavor. Good sweetness, too. 3.8/5.0
Almond Rock (Almond biscuit topped with pistachios): Good crumble, with a bit of toughness so that the cookie isn’t falling apart. The cookie feels somewhat bland at first, since it combines two rather neutral flavors (a thick layer of almond and a thin layer of pistachios). The almond comes through in full force at the end, for a surprisingly big nutty finish. 3.0/5.0
Brochtoc (Traditional pastry made with cooked flour and dark chocolate): Another gritty pastry, but here it’s delicious, retaining a viscous quality that binds the whole pastry together, like halawa. Add in the rich chocolate as a further gum-like binding agent, and the mix of rich and crumbly begins to make sense. The chocolate has some strong flavor, though it doesn’t feel all that fresh/strong. 4.0/5.0
Florentine (Traditional almond biscuit made with honey, fruit chunks, and dipped in dark chocolate): Very tough to the bite initially, especially for a biscuit. But once you bite in, the viscosity of honey makes the biscuit surprisingly chewy, in a very good way. Expect big, but not overpowering, honey sweetness, combined with some fruit. No dark chocolate to speak of, though. 4.0/5.0
Vanilla White (Vanilla biscuit dipped in white chocolate): A crumbly and powdery, but refreshing sensation, since this biscuit seems to have a very nice butteriness (like the cocoa butter in white chocolate). It’s a tad too sweet, especially with the white chocolate and vanilla working together. That sweetness creates an odd taste when combined with the dryness (that is, white chocolate doesn’t seem to work too well in drier pastries). 2.5/5.0
Round Walnut (Walnut biscuit with powdered sugar coating): Too much powdered sugar, practically clinging to the mouth. Still, this pastry needs that sweetness, because the walnuts have none. I enjoyed the big flavor of the walnuts, which were included in large chunks. 2.5/5.0
Date Slice Sim Sim (Traditional date pastry topped with roasted sesame seeds): A combo that doesn’t seem to work. The dates add that thick, fruity sweetness. The smoky, almost nutty sesame gets somewhat in the way of the fruitier, tangier qualities. But both flavors are delicious separately, and the long smoky finish is nice. 3.0/5.0